Experts

Bernard Gwertzman

Bio

Bernard Gwertzman has spent his entire career in journalism, starting as a reporter for the Washington Star in Washington, DC, in 1960. There he covered the Cold War as a specialist on Communist affairs. In late 1968, he was hired by the New York Times and sent to Moscow as its bureau chief from 1969-71, where he covered the tensions along the Soviet-Chinese border and the first steps toward detente.

In 1971, Gwertzman returned to Washington, where he worked for the next sixteen years covering U.S. foreign policy for the Times. He traveled throughout the Middle East with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, where he charted the first Arab-Israeli accords, leading up to the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel brokered by President Carter in 1979. In that period, he also wrote extensively on the first arms control accords between the United States and Russia.

With the advent of President Reagan to the White House in 1981, he covered the chill in Soviet-American relations, followed by the warming of the Gorbachev-Reagan ties. In 1987, Gwertzman was invited to New York to become the deputy foreign editor of the Times, and in 1989, he became foreign editor. During his tenure as foreign editor, he directed the Times' coverage of the collapse of the Soviet empire, the Persian Gulf war, the U.S. invasion of Panama, the first Israeli agreement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and the outbreak of the Bosnian war. In the six years Mr. Gwertzman was at the helm, the New York Times won four Pulitzer Prizes for international coverage.

When the Times began its electronic division in the summer of 1995, Mr. Gwertzman shifted to new media. He was editor-in-chief of the New York Times on the web from 1996 until he retired from the Times in 2002. He has been consulting editor for cfr.org since October 2002. Gwertzman, who has an AB and MA from Harvard, is the co-author with Haynes Johnson of Fulbright: the Dissenter, and with Michael Kaufman on three anthologies on the fall of Communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union. He lives in Riverdale, NY, with his wife Marie-Jeanne. He has two married sons, James and Michael.

The search for evidence of chemical weapons in Syria is painstaking and hampered by harsh conditions, but could yield decisive findings as debate over military action intensifies, says expert Amy E. Smithson.

Can Washington and Islamabad build a new strategic relationship? CFR's Daniel Markey says John Kerry and Nawaz Sharif are off to a friendly start, but big obstacles remain on counterterror cooperation.

The Taliban believes it will have the upper hand in potential negotiations with the Afghan government and its partner in Washington, but it remains unclear what the insurgent group's goals are in any settlement, says expert Amin Tarzi.

Syria, arms control, and economic ties are likely to be the focus of the Putin-Obama meeting in Northern Ireland, where both sides are hoping to set a new tone for the relationship, says CFR's Stephen Sestanovich.

Given Iran and Russia's strong support of the Syrian government, there are indications that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad may be prevailing in the country's civil war, says expert Michael Young.

After the disqualification of popular former president Rafsanjani, it's unclear which of the remaining, mostly conservative candidates will triumph in the June presidential election, says expert Farideh Farhi.

New plans for another global summit on the Syrian crisis represent modest progress, but the real question is whether the Kremlin is willing to withdraw support for the Assad regime, says CFR's Stephen Sestanovich.

In their first White House meeting on Tuesday, Presidents Obama and Park will likely seek to reassert the long-standing security and economic relationship between the United States and South Korea, says CFR's Scott Snyder.

The political standoff between the Shiite government of Nuri al-Maliki and Sunni protestors is fueling growing instability in Iraq, which recorded its most violent month in five years, explains Iraq expert Ned Parker.

Moderator:

Cold War Reflections and Today's Realities

Speakers:

James M. Goldgeier, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations, Council on Foreign Relations; Coauthor, "America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11", Robert M. Kimmitt, Senior International Counsel, WilmerHale; Former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (1989-91), and Former U.S. Ambassador to Germany (1991-93)

Presider:

Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org; Former Foreign Editor, "The New York Times" (1989-96)